Processes for preparing polyol fatty acid polyesters, including processes that utilize solvent-free transesterification reactions, have been described in U.S. Pat. No.: 3,963,699, Rizzi et al., issued Jun. 15, 1976; U.S. Pat. No. 4,517,360, Volpenhein, issued May 14, 1985; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,518,772, Volpenhein, issued May 21, 1985. Additional patents describing processes for preparing lower and higher esters of polyols include U.S. Pat. No.: 2,893,990, Hass et al., issued Jul. 7, 1959; U.S. Pat. No. 3,251,827, Schnell et al., issued May 17, 1966, which discloses that the particle size of the sugar should be kept small to avoid formation of higher esters; U.S. Pat. No. 3,558,597, Brachel et al., issued Jan. 26, 1971; U.S. Pat. No. 3,644,333, Osipow et al., issued Feb. 22, 1972; U.S. Pat. No. 3,792,041, Yamagishi et al., issued Feb. 12, 1974, which discloses making a solution of sucrose and fatty acid soap in water and adding the fatty acid ester and catalyst before elevating the temperature to drive off the water; U.S. Pat. No. 4,032,702, James, issued Jun. 28, 1977, which discloses using lower esters of sucrose as emulsifiers in the preparation of lower esters and the use of soap as a catalyst for such reactions; U.S. Pat. No. 4,298,730, Galleymore et al., issued Nov. 3, 1981, which also discloses the use of soap as an emulsifier and catalyst; U.S. Pat. No. 4,334,061, Bossier et al., issued Jun. 8, 1982, which discloses the use of a water washing step to purify the polyol polyester and incidentally discloses the use of inert gas sparging to remove lower alcohol from the reaction between sucrose and lower alkyl ester of fatty acid to speed the reaction and the removal of unreacted sucrose from an initial stage of a batch reaction for no indicated reason; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,877,871, Klemann et al., issued Oct. 31, 1989. PCT publication WO 92/04361 published Mar. 19, 1992 discloses a process for obtaining highly esterified polyol fatty acid polyesters having reduced levels of difatty ketones and beta-ketoesters, which publication is incorporated herein by reference.
It can be desirable to reduce the level of partially esterified polyol in a reaction product comprising polyol polyesters. Typically, the level of partially esterified polyol esters are reduced by reacting the higher level polyol polyesters to even higher levels. For instance, in the case of sucrose fatty acid polyesters, the level of hexa, penta, and other lower esters is typically reduced by increasing the level of sucrose octaester. This has the disadvantage that higher levels of sucrose octaester are typically associated with high levels of other byproducts, such as difatty ketones and beta-ketoesters. In addition, higher level of octaester production typically result in higher production costs.